


Hunters and Halfas

by WolfeyedWitch



Category: Danny Phantom, Supernatural
Genre: (it's only referenced but there you go), Angst with a Happy Ending, Because of Reasons, Blood, Creepy, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Destiel - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Torture, Medical Torture, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Vivisection, sam and tucker and jazz are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 09:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15969221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfeyedWitch/pseuds/WolfeyedWitch
Summary: Danny has left Amity Park. But has he gotten away from danger, or just farther in? When he interrupts the Winchesters on a hunt, he finds out first hand how hunters deal with things they don't understand.





	1. Ask for a Safeword, Dude

**Author's Note:**

> I recently found Danny Phantom on Hulu and ended up binge-watching the first season. Will continue, because I have no gears between “full go” and “full stop”. Anyway. I stumbled across some SuperPhantom crossover stuff, and, well… There was an itch. This is me scratching it.
> 
> Set after D-Stabilized, no PP for DP. Set in a Supernatural Season 6 AU where Castiel took the better part of Dean's year off to get ALL of Sam out of Hell so he was never soulless, and Cas didn't go behind the boys' backs to work with Crowley.
> 
> Warnings for implied/referenced torture, blood, general creepiness. All aboard the angst train, destination happy endings with plenty of pain along the way.

His first thought was that his head hurt. 

No, scratch that. His first thought was that the ceiling was moving, and his ceiling wasn’t supposed to move. _Then_ he got to the part where his head hurt, and his wrists hurt, and he was tied up.

“Well, this isn’t exactly how I expected my day to go,” Danny Fenton said aloud. “If you wanna tie people up, you really should ask them for their safeword first!” he yelled, hoping whoever (whatever?) had brought him here would appreciate the wit.

Speaking of which, where was _here_?

The ceiling wasn’t actually moving, to start with. It was an enormous fan in the ceiling that was moving. 

Was that a _pentagram_? There was a pentagram on the grate over the fan. 

Fan-tastic.

That one was bad even for him.

The rest of the room was similar: cultist symbols and paranoia written in chalk over a budget doomsday prepper’s home renovation. He was sitting in the middle of it on top of another big-ass pentagram, tied to a chair, with a circle of white… something around him.

He flexed his arms against the ropes around his torso, wrists, and ankles. Nope, not moving.

He groaned at his stupidity and would have smacked his forehead if his hands were free. “I’m going to chalk that up to waking up in a creepy lair and not intrinsic idiocy,” he muttered. 

He had _ghost powers_. All he needed to do was go intangible, and he could walk right out of here. Easy-peasy. He pulled on the cold chill of ectoplasm that always lingered at his core, even in his human form. 

And then he had to bite back a yell as the ropes suddenly burned. The pain made him lose control of his powers, leaving him a normal(ish) teenager tied to a chair.

What was that, some kind of ghost-proofing on the ropes? It felt like the Fenton Specter Deflector, or one of Plasmius’s creations. But they looked nothing like the high-tech contraptions Plasmius or his parents used to control ghosts.

Whatever it was, it seemed he wasn’t getting out of this with his ghost powers.

“Hiya, Spooky,” a gruff voice came from across the room. The (barred) door opened, revealing two dudes. He immediately dubbed them Tall and Taller. It was Tall who was talking. “Thought I heard you awake in here.”

“Great. I’m awake, you’re here, you can let me out of your sex torture dungeon and we can all pretend this never happened. Sound good?” Danny quipped, trying to hide his nervousness. His situation didn’t scream ‘everything is going to end perfectly fine.’ This was probably going to go only downhill from here.

“Actually no,” Tall said. “And why does everyone keep thinking they’re in a sex torture dungeon?”

“Probably because you seem like the type to have a sex torture dungeon, Dean,” Taller said.

“Kids these days,” Tall—Dean—said, shaking his head. “Anyway. Why don’t you explain to our pal Spooky here why those ropes aren’t going anywhere, Sammy?”

“Right,” Sammy said. He sat down on the cot that was against one wall. Definitely a paranoid occultist prepper’s bunker. “Those ropes are soaked with salt water, meaning that nothing intangible can pass through them.”

“Salt water? Right. Because that totally works to keep things that go bump in the night away,” Danny scoffed. If that were true his parents wouldn’t have needed to spend all that money on ecto-energy shields.

His parents… 

“You tell us, Spooky,” Dean said. “You’re the one who’s having a reaction to it.”

It was true; even in his human form, Danny could feel the burn of the ropes. Being a halfa really sucked sometimes.

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Danny said, but his tone fell flat. This was really starting to freak him out. Where _was_ he? How did he _get_ here? “Doesn’t mean anything. You probably put acid on them or something.”

Were they hunters? Some kind of low-tech hunters with old-timey superstitious methods?

If only he could remember how he _got_ there!

“Nope, just salt. Burns the crap out of plenty of supernatural beings, though,” Sammy said.

Shit, they were hunters. Just his luck.

_Shit._

“And if that isn’t enough to keep you from trying anything, let’s run through the rest of the precautions here,” Dean said. “Solid iron walls, lined with salt. Salt line around you. Warding sigils from most major religions. Devil’s trap to power down any demonic mojo you might have. This—” he pulled out a very shiny, very real looking handgun— “is loaded with silver. That—” Sammy pulled out another menacing looking gun— “is loaded with pure iron. And these—” they both pulled out shotguns— “are loaded with rock salt.”

Danny’s eyes had grown steadily wider as Dean kept talking, but at the sight of the guns he thought they would pop out of his skull.

“Death by high blood pressure, lucky me,” he said, trying to keep up his cocky facade and not let the hunters know they were getting to him. Those weren’t ecto-guns. They could hurt him in his human form, which he seemed to be stuck in. He was not panicking. He was _not_ panicking.

Okay, he was definitely panicking.

“The salt works against any incorporeal beings, spirits and the like,” Sammy explained, leaning forward on the cot. “Iron is good for ghosts, too. Silver is good against shapeshifters.”

“We wanted to have all our bases covered,” Dean added. “Didn’t wanna miss anything, as we weren’t sure exactly what you are. Speaking of which.” He pulled out a flask and walked over to where Danny was tied up.

“I’m good, I’m not thirsty,” Danny said warily. That was a total lie, of course. He was parched, but it could be anything in that flask. Odds were low on it being drinkable.

Dean splashed the contents on Danny’s face.

“Thanks for that,” the boy said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. He glared, knowing his eyes were their ghostly poison-green. “Assholes.”

The two hunters shared a confused look. 

“Salt obviously works, but not holy water?” Sammy asked.

They had splashed him with _holy water_? What did they think he was, a demon or something?

“We could try silver,” Dean suggested.

“Or, just throwing this out there, you could try _telling me what the fuck is going on_!” Danny shouted. His parents would disapprove of the language, but 1) he had bigger problems, and 2) they had lost all rights to scold him even in his own mind. “ _Why_ am I tied up in your not-a-sex-dungeon?! What do you _want?!_ ”

Sammy seemed to take pity on him at that point. He held up his hands, showing he was unarmed. For now. Those guns were easily within reach of his gigantor arms. “Okay, bad start. Let’s try this again. I’m Sam, and this is my brother, Dean. We’re hunters. You burst into our hunt with some rather… unusual powers.”

“You attacked us,” Dean added, obviously uncomfortable with the ‘treat Danny like a sentient being’ routine. “And then you passed out.”

“And your appearance changed rather drastically when you did,” Sam said. “So we’d like to get a handle on what you are.”

Danny almost groaned. _Now_ he remembered. 

He’d been flying away from Amity; he couldn’t stay with his parents anymore, not with their latest attack on him. Well, on Danny _Phantom_. He couldn’t live with them, couldn’t hide his secret any more. And he couldn’t stay with Sam or Tucker, either, not when their parents and his talked so often.

He’d left, flying as fast as he could while ignoring his wounds. He’d wound up in The Middle of Nowhere, population Who Cares, when he’d seen a fire in the middle of a field.

Just because he was hurt and didn’t know where he was was no reason to neglect his duty to help people. Obviously he’d gone down to check it out. He’d put out the fire, and then his ghost sense had kicked in. 

Cue Angry Young Ghost Girl, stage left. He’d tried to talk to her, but she had a one-track mind and didn’t appreciate his talk-it-out approach. And of course he’d left the Fenton Thermos back at his—no, it wasn’t _his_ any more—at his parents’ house. So he’d ended up fighting her, getting in a good ectoblast that should have knocked her halfway back to the Ghost Zone.

That’s when Tall and Taller had come in waving guns. He’d dodged their first shot and sent a couple of warning ghost rays to the ground at their feet. Then he’d gone intangible and flown off, but whatever they’d been packing—rock salt, apparently—still hit him. He’d crash landed and they’d caught up with him; he’d bet any money he had (which wasn’t much) that the lingering headache was from them inducing unconsciousness.

Then he’d woken up here, and the rest was recent history.

“You shot me,” Danny said, a note of hurt and anger creeping into his voice. He could still feel the wounds, meaning they weren’t healing nearly as fast as they should have. “You _shot_ me. And then you hit me in the head with what, a crowbar? I didn’t _pass out_ , I was _knocked out!_ Big difference, gigantor!” 

Tears were pricking at his eyes. He was so sick of people treating him like he was some… some _monster!_ All he was trying to do was _help!_ And instead of getting thanked, he was getting attacked! And to top it off, he had managed to escape one deadly situation only to end up right in the middle of another. He was going to die, actually properly die, in some crackpot conspiracy fruitloop’s basement, killed by two scruffy low-tech hunters whose wardrobes belonged in Lumberjack’s Weekly.

He continued, “And now you’ve got me tied up in your creepy lair, and want to ‘get a handle’ on _what_ I am? So what, you know how to properly get rid of me? To _kill_ me?! How about a big, fat, _NO THANKS!”_

The last words came out as more than a scream—they were a wail. He had lost control of his powers enough that his ghostly wail was making an appearance. It was taxing at the best of times, which this certainly wasn’t. Using any of his powers made the ropes burn into his skin. The rock-salt wounds, plus his earlier ones, plus the burn of the ropes were too much for his body to take.

He passed out again.


	2. Teary-eyed Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean are out of their depths, and call in reinforcements.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam's POV

Sam eyed their ‘guest’ warily. The seeming-boy was slumped in the chair they’d set up in the middle of the panic room; he probably would have fallen to the floor if not for the ropes tying him up.

They really were doing a number on him; Sam could see the blisters forming on the not-kid’s wrists from where he sat. Whatever this creature was, it definitely had a reaction to salt. A reaction that was even stronger when it tried to use whatever powers it had.

“What was that, you think? Angel voice?” Sam asked.

“Kid’s too… shit, I wanna say human,” Dean said with a grimace. “Too something to be an angel. Doesn’t have their holy stick up his ass. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. The hell kind of monster gets all teary-eyed and outraged at being treated like a monster?”

“I dunno, Dean, maybe one that doesn’t think of itself as a monster?” Sam suggested. “We don’t have the whole picture here. Something’s not right.”

“You think?” Dean quipped. “We have a thing that could be a weird shifter, could be a freaky kind of ghost possession, could be something _entirely new_ with our luck tied up in Bobby’s panic room! We don’t know what it is; all we know is that it’s got a taste for spandex jumpsuits and snarky comebacks and a weakness to salt and iron. That’s not exactly enough for us to go off to properly kill the thing.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sam said. “Look, we don’t know what he is. Instead of flying blind here, we should probably call reinforcements.”

Dean nodded. “You call Bobby, I’ll call Cas.”

Sam snorted. “Did you finally teach him how to answer a phone call? Because that’s something I’d pay to see.”

“Shut up.” Dean walked out of the panic room, presumably going somewhere private to, er, _pray_ to Cas.

Sam walked out as well, heading to the salvage yard to get better cell reception.

“I’m busy, this better be important,” Bobby answered surlily.

“Hey Bobby,” Sam said, fighting down a smile. Good to know that some things never changed, like the way Bobby answered the phone. “Ran into a little trouble on a hunt and could use your help.”

“Weren’t you boys just on some B-list ghost case? Don’t tell me you need my help with that.”

“No, we found her bones, they were in a field outside of town. That’s not the problem.”

He laid out the whole story for Bobby.

The brothers’ last case had been fairly routine, all told. A family had just moved into an old house to fix it up, deaths ensued. A ghost was the culprit. They’d traced it back to a girl who’d been murdered there decades back. The hardest part had been finding the bones, as her murderer hadn’t exactly left her around for a proper burial. But they’d managed to track them down and do the regular salt and burn.

That’s where things had gotten strange. 

The Winchesters always brought a six-pack and stuck around while the bones burned, just in case the ghost tried to interfere at all. Pretty standard, all told. That wasn’t the weird part.

Someone else had shown up and put out the fire. It looked like a kid—mostly. It looked like a kid if kids had snow-white hair that moved like it was underwater, glowing green eyes, and a form that faded around the edges like an old photograph. It flew its way down to the grave fire and put it out with ice. That’s when the ghost had shown up. The kid seemed to try to talk to her, but she had gone full vengeful spirit and wasn’t in any kind of mood to be talked down.

Sam and Dean had grabbed the shotguns, fully prepared to blast her away until they could restart the fire and burn her bones properly. But instead of needing to protect the kid, he managed to _fight hand-to-hand_ with the ghost. Eventually he’d blasted her with some weird green rays out of his hands and she’d disappeared. 

Dean had then shot the thing with rock salt on principle.

It retaliated by shooting green rays at them, too, just barely missing them and scorching the ground at their feet. It then started to fly away, but Dean’s next shot caught the thing and it fell. Sam knocked it out with a crowbar.

As soon as it was unconscious, it changed. Instead of white, its hair was black. The jumpsuit it was wearing changed to a t-shirt and jeans. The glow disappeared.

“And since we were in your neck of the woods, we borrowed your panic room to get a better handle on this,” Sam finished. “Thing’s corporeal now, but low body temp and very slow heart rate. Got a reaction to salt and iron but not holy water. In one shape it bled something like green ecto, but in the other it’s more like human blood.”

“Bet Dean’s loving that he’s gotta clean that out of the car,” Bobby said. 

“Yeah, he was bitching about it the whole way here,” Sam laughed. “It also shares Dean’s love of snappy comebacks, by the way. And it was more than a little peeved at us.”

“Did it try to blast you or something?” Bobby asked.

“That’s what doesn’t add up, though. It didn’t. As far as I can tell, all it tried to do was protect itself or break out. Its reaction to salt increased when it tried to use any kind of powers, though.”

“Hm. Doesn’t sound familiar. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up.

Sam snapped the phone shut, tapping it on his chin as he thought. This was so beyond his non-existent paygrade. Why did he and Dean keep having to deal with every new problem that popped up?

Monsters these days.

Dean apparently had finished talking with Cas and joined Sam in the salvage yard.

“So? Did you get in touch with Cas?” Sam asked.

“For once he even managed to answer his actual phone. No prayers needed,” Dean said.

“And?” Sam prompted when it seemed like Dean was done.

“And he said he’s busy with heaven stuff, but he’ll be here as soon as he can. He said he has an idea but didn’t want to discuss it over the phone,” Dean said.

Sam nodded. Now they just had to wait, apparently.

 

Bobby got there first, to no one’s surprise. Cas had been increasingly inconsistent recently.  
“Well? Are you two idjits gonna keep standing here or show me what you crashed my house to keep locked up?” he said when he pulled up.

The three went down to the panic room. The thing was still tied up, but it was awake again. It was glaring at them through the bars on the door, eyes vacillating between bright blue and poison green.

“Huh,” Bobby said. “This is it?”

“Yeah. Told you it looks like a kid,” Sam said.

“Hate it when they look like kids,” Dean grumbled.

It certainly didn’t make their job easier; none of the hunters liked killing kids, but when a monster takes the shape of one…

They did what they had to. Sam tried to remember that.

“I can hear you, you know!” the creature yelled, voice hoarse.

They ignored it. 

“So what do you think?” Dean asked.

“Looks familiar…” Bobby said.

“You know what it is?” Sam asked.

“Not _what_ , but maybe _who_ ,” Bobby said. He led them upstairs to his office. “Remember a while back when that call went out for ghost hunters in Amity Park?”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Thought we wrote that whole town off as a joke.”

“We did,” Sam said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Bobby rummaged through the clutter on his desk until he found a couple sheets.

“Well, I held on to the info about that ‘ghost kid’ they put a bounty on. He later called himself ‘Danny Phantom’ to the media. And just the other day, a local couple reported their son missing. Danny Fenton.” Bobby held up both sheets of paper. “Look familiar?”

One sheet had a picture of a kid with white hair in a black and white suit, flying through the sky. The picture had the grainy, blurred quality of most ghosts captured on film. It was captioned with the details of the million dollar bounty on its head. At the bottom Bobby had updated it with the name ‘Danny Phantom’.

The other was a missing child report on Danny Fenton, son of local ghost hunter quacks Jack and Maddie Fenton. He had last been seen a week prior. It included a picture of a dark haired boy with blue eyes.

The two pictures were the two faces the thing downstairs had worn.

“That’s definitely him,” Sam said.

“So what, you think a shifter with a sick sense of humor’s been shacking up with those loons?” Dean asked.

“Or some kind of weird ghost possession? If Amity Park isn’t actually a hoax, maybe things work different there,” Sam suggested.

“Well, guess there’s only one way to find out,” Bobby said.

The three hunters walked back down to the panic room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun dun! Sorry, couldn't resist.
> 
> I changed Danny's ghost form a bit to be better in line with the Supernatural canon. I also ditched the magic girl transformation, but that doesn't come up here. He's just a little more transparent and creepy (as a ghost Should Be).
> 
> So, what do you think? Please let me know in the comments! Constructive criticism, pterodactyl shrieking, capslock vent... All welcome.


	3. New Variables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny wakes up for the second time. Danny POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: Fixed an error. Danny is 16, not 15. This is set in season 3 of DP, after D-Stabilized, so they're going into their junior year of high school and Danny would have had his birthday.

Waking up the second time was easier. Sure his head still throbbed, the ropes still burned, and he still had no way out of this, but at least Danny knew where he was this time. And at least he’d just gone unconscious from overexerting his ghost powers rather than getting beat upside the head.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that much better. His throat _burned_ ; the raw power of his wail wasn’t meant to be used in human form.

He was starting to panic. At least back in Amity he knew what everyone wanted. Skulker wanted to skin him and put his pelt on display; Plasmius wanted him to be his protege/son; the Guys in White wanted to do painful experiments; and his parents wanted to dissect him. His chest burned thinking about that last one. Here he had no clue what to expect. Home (could he even call it that anymore?) was far from fine and dandy, but it was at least a known set of variables.

And they say he never payed attention in math class.

_(Tied up, helpless, no one coming to save you…)_

No! He wasn’t back there. He was somewhere else, with some _one_ else. Maybe that would make a difference.

He was trying to calm down, maybe figure out if he could convince them that whatever ‘creature’ he was still needed food and water, when Tall and Taller came back with a third friend. They didn’t open the door, just watched him like a lab rat in a cage. He stared back, feeling his eyes change back and forth between human blue and ghost green.

“Huh,” New Guy said. “This is it?”

“Yeah. Told you it looks like a kid,” Taller (Sam) said.

“Hate it when they look like kids,” Tall (Dean) added, looking like someone had kicked his puppy.

Danny scowled, unsure of which part of that conversation he objected to most. First off, he was not an _it_. He may have been part ghost but he was still a _person!_

_(Prep it for examination, get a sample of it, it it it it it)_

Second, he wasn’t a _kid!_ He was 16 for crying out loud!

Wait, did they think he was faking how he looked somehow? They’d said something about shifters earlier. Shapeshifters, maybe? He ignored that new thought in favor of yelling, “I can hear you, you know!” It came out rough and strained.

They ignored him. Danny scowled harder.

“So what do you think?” Dean asked.

“Looks familiar…” New Guy said.

“You know what it is?” Sam asked.

Yeah, treat him like a thing, real polite.

“Not _what_ , but maybe _who_ ,” New Guy said. He waved them all out, leaving Danny alone in a cage again.

He was getting a bad feeling about this.

Well, he had a bad feeling already. It was called rope burn, among other things. He was getting a worse feeling about what they knew about his identity.

After a while (too long? Not long enough?), the three hunters came back, this time all the way into the not-a-sex-dungeon.

“I see you brought a friend,” Danny quipped, wincing at how his voice grated in his throat. 

“Hello,” New Guy said. “I’m Bobby Singer. And you are?”

“Still not dumb enough to tell you guys what I am and make it easy for you to _kill_ me, you fruitloops,” Danny shot back, tugging at the ropes again. Whoever these hunters were, they tied knots like sailors. The ropes weren’t going anywhere.

“That’s not what I meant, kid,” Ne—Bobby said. “I meant what’s your name.”

That brought Danny to a halt. He stared, trying to think why hunters would bother asking him that. Behind Bobby, Sam and Dean shared a look that Danny couldn’t decipher. 

“It’s Danny,” he finally said, not seeing any reason not to tell them. “But don’t act like you suddenly care. What, the whole dumb cop, smartass cop routine didn’t work and now you wanna add a nice cop to the mix?”

Bobby ignored the sass that would have gotten Danny a detention back at Casper High and just nodded. “Danny. I thought so.”

The older man pulled out some sheets of paper and walked up to Danny’s chair. “Tell me, do you prefer Fenton or Phantom?”

One sheet had the information that Vlad had given out when he put the bounty on Danny, with the name ‘Danny Phantom’ written at the bottom in a hasty scrawl. The other was a missing person’s flyer for Danny Fenton.

_Huh, I didn’t think they’d even realize I was missing yet._ The thought made something in his chest hurt unrelated to the wounds.

Then the full weight of the information presented to him sunk in. These hunters had seen him change forms. They had seen him use his ghost powers. _They knew both of his identities._

And he was tied up and completely at their mercy.

He panicked. His human heart beat rabbit-fast against his ribs, and he could feel his breath catch in his throat. He pulled up an ecto-shield in a last ditch effort to protect himself. That lasted for under ten seconds until the pain of the salted ropes was too much to handle. The dissipating shield knocked him backwards, and he and the stupid chair he was tied to fell over. He hissed in pain as he hit the floor.

All of his fears bubbled over until he was babbling, begging, pleading with the hunters who now had him prisoner. 

“Please don’t send me back to Amity, don’t do it I never meant to hurt anyone I was trying to protect people I never meant for people to get hurt, kill me if you really think you have to but just _don’t send me back there, oh God they won’t just kill me they’ll dissect me, they’ll pull me apart molecule by molecule oh God oh God I don’t want to die I don’t want to really properly fully die—”_

He broke off as the hunters came towards him and he hyperventilated to the point he couldn’t get words to come out. He thrashed against the ropes, trying to get away from the blurry men. 

Blurry?

Oh shit, he was crying on top of everything else.

They grabbed the chair and Danny flinched, trying to get away from them despite knowing it was impossible.

_They’re really gonna kill me._

But all they did was set the chair upright. 

Danny broke. He sobbed, no longer trying to hide his tears, no longer caring if they saw.

“Dean, hand me your knife,” he heard Bobby say.

“But—” Dean’s gruff voice came.

“But nothing, you idjits! You wanted my opinion and this is it!”

Danny shut his eyes, not wanting to see his death coming. Tears continued to flow from behind his scrunched eyelids.

Footsteps. A blade pressed against his wrist. Then—

The burning of the ropes was gone?

Danny opened his eyes to see Bobby cut the ropes off his other wrist, then his torso and ankles. The older man stepped back and flipped closed a switchblade that would have made Skulker proud.

Danny flexed his hands and feet and wiped the tears off his face with the back of his hand. It took a minute for his sobs to die down to hiccupping gasps and then dissipate entirely.

“Bobby, what the hell?” Dean said.

“I know a scared kid when I see one,” the older hunter said. There was pain in his voice, like an old wound never properly healed. “Just ‘cause you don’t understand something don’t make it evil. You two are acting like Gordon.”

“Danny?” Sam’s voice came, soft and questioning. “You’re bleeding.”

Danny looked down to take stock of himself. His wrists were definitely burned, but that would heal soon enough. The ropes around his ankles and torso hadn’t left as bad a mark with fabric between them and skin. So what was…

Oh. There was a splotch of blood on his shirt. He must have reopened his wounds and bled through the bandages.

“I’ll get the first aid kit,” Dean said.

“It’s—” Bobby started.

“I know,” Dean cut him off. 

“And grab the good painkillers!” Bobby added. He turned his attention to Danny. “What happened, kid? That’s not from where these two idjits tagged you.”

Danny shook his head. “It’s from earlier,” he said. “Thought it would be healed by now. Guess it reopened.”

“Can we take a look?” Sam asked.

Danny hesitated, breath catching at the thought of someone seeing him that vulnerable again.  
Bobby must have caught his reluctance as the older hunter offered him a brief reprieve. “Here, why don’t we get you more comfortable, first?” He gestured to the bed, which Sam pulled away from the wall slightly.

Danny nodded. He slowly stood up and started limping towards them. The two men watched closely as he stepped over the circle of… was it seriously just salt that could cause that much grief? He seriously needed to let Sam and Tucker know that. It would make their lives much easier if they could be armed with kitchen condiments rather than ectoguns. There was resistance, a faint sense of heat, but he managed to step outside of the circle without much problem.

“Huh,” Sam said as Danny sat down. “So you’re really not a ghost possession case.”

Danny furrowed his brow. They were still testing him, weren’t they. “Like overshadowing someone? No, I’m really not.”

“The hell kind of ghost possession could take a round of rock salt to the chest anyway,” Bobby said. Whatever the relationship was between these hunters, the younger two obviously looked up to and respected the older one. Sam looked properly chastised at Bobby’s words.

“Anti-ghost stuff doesn’t have that much of an effect on me when I’m like this,” Danny said.

Dean made his reappearance with what looked like a black doctor’s bag. “You need to get more painkillers, Bobby. You’re running low.” He held up a half-empty bottle of tequila as if that made any kind of sense, and handed it to Danny.

“I’m not old enough,” he protested.

“You’re old enough to get shot with rock salt, plus whatever else happened to you, then you’re old enough to drink,” Bobby said. When Danny opened his mouth to protest further, he added, “My house, my rules.”

Danny took the bottle and took a long swallow, then coughed. “That’s gross,” he said, handing it back to Dean.

“But effective,” Dean said with a smirk. “You gonna let us patch you up or what?”

After a brief hesitation, Danny slowly pulled off his shirt, wincing as the movement tugged on his wounds.

“What did you mean, ‘when you’re like this’?” Sam asked.

“Huh?” Danny said, voice muffled by the t-shirt over his head.

“You said anti-ghost stuff doesn’t work that much on you ‘when you’re like this.’ Does that mean it works on you more some other way?” 

A+ student right there.

“Yeah,” Danny said hesitantly. “It works way better when I’m Phantom. Uh, like this—” he gestured to his human form— “it does more than it would for normal people, I guess. Drove my parents crazy that I kept setting off their stuff; they kept thinking it was a calibration issue.” He frowned thinking about them.

“So there is shapeshifting involved?” Bobby asked. 

“I guess?” Danny said. “I don’t think I’m up for show and tell right now, though. That anti-ghost stuff you have really took it out of me. Is that seriously just salt?”

“Yup,” Dean said. “The purer the better.”

“It’s based on the idea that salt is a purifier,” Sam explained. “When it comes in contact with something that isn’t pure, like a spirit, it burns them.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Danny said with a frown. “S’not what we use in Amity though.”

“What do you use there?” Sam asked.

“Ghost shields, ectoguns, stuff like that. Based on the principle that ghosts are ectoplasmic manifestations animated by electrical activity, so disrupting that electrical activity, like, destabilizes a ghost,” Danny said. It was weird having to explain something that was such common knowledge.

“Fascinating. Now will you stop stalling and let us help you?” Dean said.

Danny realized he was still clutching his t-shirt against his chest, hiding himself from view. Slowly he let it down, looking at the hasty bandages he’d applied. Sure enough, he’d bled through them.

“Whoever patched you up did a crap job, kid,” Dean said. “And when’s the last time those bandages were changed?”

“I was in a rush,” Danny said, defensive. “And never. They’ve been on since it happened.”

“Which was…?” Sam prompted.

“About two days ago?” Danny guessed. He hadn’t kept the best track of time in his rush to get out of Amity. And being knocked out certainly didn’t help.

“Uh huh. They definitely need to be changed then,” Bobby said. “You wanna take them off, or you want us to do it?”

“No, I’ll do it,” Danny said hastily. He turned the bandages intangible and pulled them off. One of the perks of having ghost powers: no painful band-aid removals.

He heard all three hunters gasp as they saw his chest clearly for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd apologize for the cliffie, but... I'm not actually sorry. Anyway. As always, comments feed the author. Let me know what you think!


	4. Stripped Masks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny gets patched up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this is where we actually see what's happened to Danny. No descriptions of it happening here, but there is some medical care including stitches as well as descriptions of the actual wounds. Not too gory, but I'm not always the best judge. Let me know if you need a gore-free summary.

Bobby Singer had seen and done some violence in his day. As a hunter, it was part of the job. Every hunter he knew was covered in scars, mental and physical.

This kid looked as bad as any hunter he’d ever seen.

He’d known straight off that something was up. When Sam had called him he hadn’t been far, only in the next town over catching up on research in their library. The younger Winchester’s description had caught his interest.

A kid who could fly, shoot green blasts and _ice_ from his hands, fight with ghosts like they had solid forms, change shape, and had a scream that could rival unfiltered angel voice? If it had been anyone else who told him, Bobby would have said they were drunk and told them to sleep it off. But Winchesters weren’t prone to hysterics, and Sam knew his lore the best of any hunter Bobby knew. If Sam said something was up, something was up.

Then he got home and saw the kid for himself. He was obviously scared, though doing a good job covering it up with snappy comebacks that were better than most of Dean’s. His attention to detail, his wariness as he watched the three hunters’ every move spoke of a long history dealing with violence in one form or another. If the kid were older, Bobby would have pegged him as a hunter; as it was, he wondered about abuse.

All the kid’s banter was gone when confronted with his two identities, though. His mask of bravado was stripped away, leaving a terrified teen. Danny obviously had powers he could have used to hurt them then, but instead all he did was create a shield to try to protect himself. Then his pleading for them to not send him back home cemented Bobby’s decision.

Whatever Danny was, he wasn’t a threat to them. And he needed their help.

It had been bad enough before the kid took the bandages off. Shirtless, it was plain to see that Danny was littered with scars, from the Lichtenberg figures of electrocution to simpler cuts, slashes, and burns. He also had a wealth of bruises, including ones around his neck and beneath the new burns on his wrists from the salted ropes.

Beneath the bandages was far worse.

Green ectoplasm smeared the kid’s chest along with dried blood, a gory reminder of the boy’s two forms. And in the center of his chest was a Y-incision, sloppily stitched closed. A few stitches had torn free, reopening the wound.

Someone had _dissected_ him.

“Balls,” Bobby cursed quietly.

He quickly got over his initial shock and took charge of the situation. He could freak out about who would do that to a kid later, preferably with booze. Lots of booze. Right now he had to keep it together.

“Sam, boil some water. We need more than the first aid kit’s got for this.”

The younger Winchester left with a quiet, “On it.”

“Hey kid, when’s the last time you ate?” Bobby asked. 

Danny stared down at the cot, fiddling with the blanket. He had refused to meet their eyes since taking off the bandages. “Um… Yesterday, I guess. Had to stop flying for a bit and rest.” 

“And before that?” Bobby pressed.

The kid had to stop and think, never a good sign. “About a week, I think.” He looked up and noticed the two hunters staring at him in shock. “I was in ghost form, it’s not the same.”

Bobby looked closer at the kid, noting his sunken cheeks, the way his ribs jutted out. “Sure it isn’t. Dean, food.”

“Lots?”

“More. And leave the door open.”

Dean stomped upstairs, anger apparent in every clenched muscle. Danny flinched as Dean passed.

Bobby pulled the chair over from where it had been in the salt circle. He sat down facing Danny, making sure not to block the exit. “Okay. Now while we wait on those two idjits, can you tell me what all happened?”

“You mean other than getting shot, knocked in the head, and burned by salt ropes?” Danny said with a weak attempt at a smile.

Bobby ignored the obvious deflection. “Other than that. The cut’s pretty obvious, though I don’t know how deep it goes. Anything else?”

He wanted to get every possible detail about who had done this so he could hunt them down, but that took a distant backseat to helping the kid. Danny obviously wasn’t ready to talk about something that traumatic.

Danny curled loosely into himself, careful not to pull the cut in his attempt to comfort himself. “My ribs are pretty banged up, but there’s not really anything you can do for that. I think I messed up my ankles. My head hurts, but I’m not concussed. This—” he gestured to the cut, pausing to blink back tears— “got pretty deep, but I think most of it didn’t transfer.”

Bobby nodded. He was impressed by the thorough analysis, and horrified by what had happened to the kid to mean he was that good at patching himself up. “You said something about healing fast, so feel free to jump in with details there, too.”

“Okay, I guess,” Danny said shakily. “Bruises usually take about a day. Cuts vary based on how bad they are; paper cuts are almost instant, something deep might take a week. Broken bones about a week or two.”

“Damn,” Bobby said. That was seriously useful.

Sam returned with a pot of gently steaming water. “Bobby, Dean’s raiding your kitchen like he’s trying to feed a hungry roogaroo. What gives?” he asked quietly.

“Danny hasn’t had a proper meal in a week,” Bobby explained.

Sam’s face softened and he looked at the boy with sympathy. “We gonna hunt down what did this to him?”

“Pretty sure it’s a _who_ , not a _what_ ,” Bobby replied.

Sam shook his head. “Dean’s right. Monsters I get. People are crazy.”

“They thought I was a monster,” Danny said quietly.

The two hunters turned, startled. They didn’t think they’d been talking loud enough for Danny to overhear.

“They thought I was a monster,” Danny repeated more strongly, fixing them both with a blue-eyed stare. “So did you when you tied me up down here. How is it different?”

“We hunt things that hurt people. We don’t torture them,” Sam said.

“They didn’t think it was torture. To them ghosts don’t have enough sentience to torture. Any pain they feel is just ‘a holdover from their pre-fatality consciousness,’” Danny said, his voice pitching up like he was mimicking someone.

Sam looked like he wanted to argue further, but Bobby cut him off. If Danny wanted to protest, he probably meant to protect whoever had done this to him, even if they didn’t deserve it. Abuse does that to people, and nothing they said was going to change it. “How about we fix you up now, and we can debate this further later, if you two want.”

Both Sam and Danny could agree to that. 

Bobby used the freshly boiled water and a towel from the panic room’s supply to clean the ecto and blood off of Danny. Up close, he could see that the stitches glowed slightly.

“What did you use for these, anyway?” he asked.

“Fenton Ghost Fisher line,” Danny said, looking slightly sheepish. “Normal thread doesn’t stay put when I change.”

“Here’s a suggestion: why don’t you stay in one form until you don’t need stitches anymore?” Dean said. He came bearing gifts in the form of two sandwiches, an apple, and two bottles of water.

“Bit hypocritical, don’t you think?” Sam shot back. It was well known that the Winchesters had pulled their share of stitches out hunting too soon after being injured.

“Whatever, bitch.”

“Jerk.”

“Hm. Is there anything else that would work? I don’t have that, and you need new stitches,” Bobby said.

“Did you guys get my backpack?” Danny asked the bickering Winchester brothers.

“Yeah, it’s upstairs,” Sam said. “It, uh, showed up when you changed back.”

“It has a halfa first aid kit in it. There’s stuff for stitches included.” Danny twisted open one of the water bottles and half-drained it in a single gulp.

Sam left to get the backpack as Bobby continued cleaning the gore. Once done, he poured some of the tequila over the stitches.

“Ow!” Danny protested. 

“It’s this or heavy-duty antibiotics, which we ain’t got,” Bobby said.

“I don’t exactly get infections,” Danny said with a glare.

Bobby shrugged. 

Sam returned with a purple backpack, and Bobby was struck again by how painfully young the kid was. He should have been carrying around school supplies in that, not a first aid kit and various other survival essentials. Bobby dug through it, passing clothes and food on his search to find the first aid kit.

“So. Halfa. Is that what you are?” Sam asked.

Danny made a non-committal noise. “It’s what the ghosts call me.”

“Sounds made up,” Dean said.

“I didn’t pick the name,” Danny shot back. “I’m not even sure if it’s a title or a slur. Anyway, it’s accurate.”

“Yeah?” Dean asked.

“Half-a-human, half-a-ghost? Halfa.”

“How’s that? You can’t exactly be half dead, you either are or you aren’t,” Dean said. 

“Trust us, we’ve died enough to know,” Sam said with wry amusement.

“What’d you do, ditch your reaper?” Dean asked.

Bobby finally found the first aid kit all the way at the bottom of the backpack. Inside the white plastic box was a small spool of the same lightly glowing thread that the other stitches were done in. Bobby pulled out the other supplies needed from his own first aid kit and got ready to redo the ripped stitches.

“I can do that,” Danny protested.

“Kid, have you seen your stitches?” Dean asked. “Let someone else handle it.”

Danny let out an aggrieved ‘harrumph’. Bobby got to work stitching the wound shut, letting the brothers do the work of keeping Danny distracted.

“You were explaining the name,” Sam reminded him.

“Mm? Yeah,” Danny said. “My parents have a portal to the Ghost Zone in their basement. It didn’t work at first, so I went in to check it out. Turns out it’s a really stupid design.” He broke off with a hiss of pain as Bobby finished a stitch.

“Why’s it stupid?” Dean asked.

“The ‘on’ button is on the inside,” Danny said.

Bobby could practically hear the brothers pale.

“You’re saying you…” Sam said.

“Yeah. I accidentally turned it on. Got zapped.”

“Yeah, he got ‘zapped’ like I got scratched by a hellhound,” Dean muttered, gaining a strange look from the half-ghost in question.

Danny shrugged and continued his story. “But it wasn’t just electric energy, it was ectoenergy too. We figured it messed with my DNA somehow.”

“‘We’? Who’s ‘we’?” Dean asked. “The genius parents who let their invention half-kill their son?”

Danny frantically shook his head. “No! They don’t know. They’re ghost hunters, they can’t— No.”

“Then who?” Sam asked gently.

“My friends, Sam and Tucker. They were there when it happened. They were the only ones who knew about both identities. Well, at first. My sister Jazz figured it out, though she didn’t tell me until way later,” Danny said.

“Done,” Bobby said, tying off the last stitch. The glow was disconcerting, but the Fenton Ghost Fishing line worked pretty well for stitches. “You go ahead and eat, then you can take some painkillers and get some sleep.”

“Don’t like painkillers, they make me all fuzzy-headed,” Danny mumbled around a bite of sandwich.

“That’s called being effective,” Dean said.

Danny ignored any possible comebacks in favor of wolfing down the food. As he ate Bobby said, “I’ve got guest rooms upstairs, you can crash there.”

Danny stared at him, blue eyes wide. “You mean I don’t have to stay in here?”

Bobby was rethinking his stance on hunting down whoever messed this kid up. “No, you don’t have to stay in the panic room.”

“The bed’s not that comfy anyway. Upstairs is way better,” Sam said with a small, strained smile.

A half hour later had Danny fully bandaged, dressed in clean clothes, and passed out in an upstairs bedroom. Bobby had given the kid the short version of the tour, just the kitchen and the closest bathroom as well as all the exits. Danny had collapsed and fallen asleep as soon as his head had touched the pillow.

Bobby came downstairs to find the Winchesters had raided his liquor cabinet. He grabbed a glass and poured a generous amount for himself as well.

“Balls,” he said, taking a generous gulp. 

“What now, Bobby?” Sam asked.

“We can’t send him back to Amity, that’s for sure. Whoever did that to him is back there,” Dean added.

“I guess when he wakes up, we’ll figure it out,” Bobby said.

But for now, he needed to get really, really drunk and try to forget the sight of a kid cut open like a cadaver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of using the Fenton Fishing line as stitches comes from Roughing It by HaiJu. Read it here: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10439110/1/Roughing-It
> 
> Comments are always welcomed!


	5. So, What Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny faces the aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains Danny telling the story of what happened to him and how he got his injuries. Not detailed but definitely dark. Proceed with caution.

_“Hello, Ghost Child,” Skulker’s voice came, echoing through the empty park._

_“Hey, metal-head! Don’t you have better things to do?” Danny taunted, quickly going ghost._

_“I always have time to hunt down worthy prey!” the ghostly hunter proclaimed._

_The fight was short but vicious. Skulker pulled out new weapons, leaving Danny battered and bruised, but he was finally crammed into a thermos._

_Except why did it feel like Danny was the one trapped?_

_He pulled, feeling restraints around his wrists and ankles. He tried to phase through them, but they shocked him._

_“Ah ah ah, ghost boy,” a sickly sweet voice came. “I spent far too long hunting you to have you get away.”_

_Danny opened his mouth to protest, to wail, to do_ anything, _but before he could get a word out a heavy metal weight clicked shut around his neck._

_“That’ll hold him!” a deep voice boomed._

_“Yes, wouldn’t want that ecto-powered scream of his to destroy the lab. Let’s get started, shall we?”_

_Everything dissolved into sharp lines of green and silver, blooming with pain._

Danny woke suddenly, a sharp delineation between unconsciousness and consciousness rather than a fuzzy blur. He quickly took stock of his situation.

No metal restraints. No ropes. He was… free?

And more than that, he actually felt better than he had in a week. He was in a _proper bed._ Funny how easy it was to take that for granted until you no longer had it. And if his nose wasn’t deceiving him, there was proper food to be had.

Danny quietly made his way downstairs to the kitchen, where Dean was cooking breakfast.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty!” the hunter greeted him. “Well, noon more like.”

“Hey,” Danny said, still uncertain of what his place was. He wasn’t tied up in a creepy lair or in a laboratory, which was a plus. But they were still hunters, and he was still something huntable. He couldn’t assume that the kindness they’d shown in patching him up would hold.

“Sam and Bobby are out on a milk run,” Dean said. “Bobby’s kitchen wasn’t stocked for teenage appetites. In the meantime, here.” 

A plate piled with pancakes and bacon appeared in front of him. Not one to look a gift horse bearing food in the mouth, Danny dug in.

“How’s the wounds?” Dean asked, still cooking. “I know rock salt hurts like a sonuvabitch, even for humans. Sorry about that, by the way.”

Danny shrugged. “Freaky kid flies around near hunters, hunters shoot. Seems logical to me. I’m healing.” 

Had Dean been shot with rock salt himself? And thinking of injuries…

“Are you and Sam okay?” Danny asked. “I kinda lost control yesterday, with the wail. I didn’t wreck your hearing or anything, did I?”

Dean shot him a look that was pure skepticism. “Kid. A, we’ve been through worse and come out alright, and B, don’t you have your own issues to worry about?”

Danny didn’t have a good answer for that, and let the subject go.

“So… where are we, anyway?” he asked between bites. It seemed like as good a way as any to gauge how they were going to deal with him. If Dean told him a straight answer, his odds were decent that they were gonna let him leave. If not… Well, hopefully they didn’t salt all the exits and he could get out with his ghost powers.

“Sioux Falls, South Dakota,” Dean said, grabbing his own stack of pancakes and joining Danny. 

Danny nodded, thinking on it. “And what’re you guys gonna do with me now?” A direct approach seemed as good as any.

“Keep you here til you’re healed up, if you’re cool with that,” Dean said, looking at Danny with calculating eyes. “Bobby hates to see his medical work go to waste with people rushing off too soon. As for after that, we can talk about it when Bobby and Sam get back.”

That all seemed… very plausible. It made Danny nervous.

Soon the pair heard a car pull up.

“Can I go out?” Danny asked.

Dean nodded.

Danny walked out the door to find a huge yard of beat-up and broken-down cars. Sam and Bobby getting out of a beat-up old truck and pulling grocery bags out of the back.

“Hey, Danny!” Sam said cheerfully.

“Good to see you up, kid,” Bobby said.

Danny nodded, still uncomfortable with the change in how they were treating him from yesterday. “Can I help you guys with those?” he asked.

“Hell no,” Bobby said, walking past Danny into the house.

Danny stared at him in shock. Had he done something wrong?

Sam noticed Danny’s concern and chuckled. “It’s fine. Give it a week before you try to help with anything. Bobby patched you up, he’s not gonna let you do any heavy lifting for a while.”

“Oh,” Danny said.

Sam smiled and walked inside as well, leaving Danny outside to ponder just how weird these hunters were.

Damn, the sunshine felt good though. Just a few days ago he’d been sure he’d never see the sun again. He closed his eyes to soak it in.

Of course that’s when something hit him in the head. Danny’s eyes snapped open to see just what had struck him, and found a familiar silver and green shape.

Danny picked up the Boo-merang just as Bobby and Sam came back for another load of groceries. 

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

Danny had to swallow hard to get his voice working again. “It’s, uh… it’s a tracking device. One my parents made.” There was a note attached in Jazz’s neat handwriting.

“Should we be worried?” Sam asked.

“I’m not sure,” Danny said. He quickly read the note.

_Danny,_

_I got Sam and Tucker’s calls and came home to see what was going on. Mom and Dad said they caught Phantom but he got away. I don’t know what all happened but I know it can’t be good. We’re really worried about you, please call!_

_Love, Jazz  
P.S. Tucker disabled the tracker._

“It’s my sister and my friends,” Danny said. He hadn’t even thought to call them, not that he really could have. “Can I borrow a phone? Mine’s kinda busted.”

Dean produced a dinosaur of a cell phone from one of his many layers of flannel.

“Thanks,” Danny said. He took the phone and flew up to the roof to have a private conversation.

Ow ow ow, that rock salt hurt when he used his powers. He’d practically forgotten about that with everything else he had on top of that. Glaring, Danny went intangible and let the grains of salt pass through him and clatter on the shingles.

That was better. At least one thing had an easy fix.

Now for something harder to fix. He sucked in a breath and typed Jazz’s number into the phone.

She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Jazz?” Danny said hesitantly. “It’s me.”

_“Danny!”_ she yelled. It was loud enough to startle him intangible and he fumbled to catch the phone before it fell off the roof. _“Oh my god are you okay we were so worried!”_

“Jazz, I’m okay, I promise. Are Sam and Tucker there?”

“Yes, they’re here, we’re all at Tucker’s right now,” she said. “Let me get them.”

Danny heard the phone crackle as Jazz put it on speaker, then Sam and Tucker’s voices.

“Danny oh my God we’re so sorry if we’d just been there—” Tucker started.

“There was so much ecto in my room and the first aid kit was gone, I thought you’d full-on _died_ —” Sam cut in.

“Danny please tell us you’re safe!” Jazz said, silencing the other teens. “What happened? Where are you?”

Danny sighed. He was really going to have to tell the story. Well, it was better that they were all together. This way he’d only have to tell it once.

“Okay, first off, it is _not_ your fault. Any of you. Jazz, you were at college! Sam, your parents dragged you off to a beauty pageant; and Tucker, weren’t you at a comic convention?” Danny said.

“Yeah, but—” Tucker said.

“If we’d—” Sam tried.

“If I’d visited—” Jazz said.

“No! It’s not any of your faults. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I got careless,” Danny said with a sigh.

“Danny?” Jazz tried. “You know this isn’t your fault, either, right? No one deserves what happened to you.”

Danny gave a humorless smirk. “You don’t even know what happened yet, Jazz.”

“I can make an educated guess. I got home this weekend, and Mom and Dad were talking about how they captured the ghost kid, and, and there were these _specimen jars,_ and oh God Danny I’m so _sorry!”_ Jazz broke off with a sob.

“Jazz, it’s okay.” It was not okay.

“Danny, as your best friend, I am obligated to tell you when you’re straight-up deluding yourself, dude,” Tucker said.

“Gee, thanks Tuck,” Danny said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Sam asked.

Danny sighed. “Like I said, I got careless. Skulker had some new weapons he wanted to test out.”

“Yikes,” Tucker said.

“You’re telling me. Anyway. I caught him in the thermos but he beat me up pretty bad. I went to toss him back into the Ghost Zone, but I was still Phantom in the lab. I must have set something off.”

“Oh no…” Sam said quietly.

“I think they’d figured out a new sedative, one that knocks out ghost powers. I got hit with a dart. Next thing I knew I was in restraints on the lab table. You know how they always said they wanted to rip the ghost kid apart molecule by molecule? Turns out they weren’t joking.”

“Danny…” Jazz started.

Danny cut her off. “I guess I’m lucky I still have vocal chords. They just put a collar on me, one that kept me from using my wail.”

“Oh god,” Tucker said.

“You don’t have to tell us if you aren’t ready, Danny,” Jazz said.

“I’m never gonna _be_ ready, Jazz, but I need to tell you. They— they shorted out my ghost powers. I couldn’t change back. They didn’t feed me, because why would a ghost need to eat? They kept me in a _cage_ in my own basement! My parents— fuck, my own parents _vivisected me!”_ He talked faster and faster, louder and louder until he was screaming into the phone.

Dead silence greeted him from the other end of the line.

Danny gave a humorless laugh. “I guess that’s the wrong term. Vivisecting means the subject is alive.”

“Oh god, _Danny,”_ Sam said, tone strangled.

“And it’s just… why did it have to be them?” A sob forced its way past Danny’s lips. “Why couldn’t it have been the Guys in White, or even another ghost? And the worst part is, I still love them. They’re my _parents,_ for God’s sake. And I know they love me too.”

Jazz spoke quietly, “Loving someone and hurting them aren’t mutually exclusive, Danny. It’s okay that you don’t know how you feel.”

“How’d you get out, dude?” Tucker asked.

Danny smiled viciously. “Stupidest thing. It was a power outage.”

“You’re kidding me.” Sam’s tone dripped disbelief.

“Nope,” Danny said, popping the ‘p’. “Should have been something dramatic, like you guys bursting in for a rescue, or even another ghost attacking. But instead the building gets hit by lightning and all the tech keeping my powers in check just shorted out. I flew as fast as I could to your place, Sam, since you had the first aid kit. I patched myself up the best I could and just flew for it. Guess it was a good thing we made those go-bags. Anyway. I’m sorry for staining your room. Guess black and green isn’t the best color combination.”

“You think I care about the stains?” Sam asked, incredulous. “Danny, I care about _you!_ Are you somewhere safe?”

“Whose phone is this, anyway? It doesn’t have GPS. Who doesn’t have GPS these days?” Tucker asked, indignant at the failure of technology.

“So you are trying to track me,” Danny said, unsurprised.

“It was my idea,” Jazz explained. “We disabled the tracker in the Boo-merang since that’s Mom and Dad’s tech and links back to the Ops Center. But Danny, can you really blame us for wanting to know where you are?”

“I guess not,” Danny said eventually. “But you could have just asked.”

“Well, consider this us asking,” Tucker said.

“Sioux Falls.”

“You’re in _South Dakota?!”_ Sam’s voice rose a whole octave on the last two words.

“How long did you fly, to end up out there?” Jazz asked.

“I don’t know, a while.” It had all been a little fuzzy at the time. 

“And seriously dude, whose phone is this?” Tucker asked again.

“A hunter’s. His name is Dean.”

The line grew quiet, then burst into life as everyone talked at once.

“A hunter?! Are you serious?!” Sam said.

“You just got _away_ from hunters, and now you’re borrowing their phone?!” Tucker added.

“Just say the word, little brother, we’ll take the Ops Center and come and rescue you!” Jazz said.

Danny smiled. It was good to know that no matter what, his friends had his back. “Thanks, but I don’t need rescuing. I’m okay, I think. They’re actually kind of nice. There’s two brothers, Sam and Dean, and this older guy named Bobby.” 

“How’d you end up with them, anyway?” Sam asked.

“Um, I kinda crashed their hunt,” Danny said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “They shot me, then knocked me out and brought me back to their creepy dungeon lair. Side note, I will take creepy budget prepper style over fancy sterile lab any day.” 

“Danny!” Jazz exclaimed. College was doing wonders on her powers of guilt-tripping. Now it took just his name.

“What, just saying! Anyway when I woke up and talked with them they actually patched me up. Apparently my stitches suck.”

“I could have told you that,” Sam said.

“I’m the one with the sewing skills, not you,” Tucker said, sounding as queasy as ever at the thought of stitching skin rather than fabric. 

“Are you safe there?” Jazz asked, still in overprotective mode.

“I think so,” Danny said. “Oh and get this. Salt.”

“Salt?” all three said at once.

“Yeah,” Danny said with a laugh. “It works almost as well as an ecto-gun. I think these guys really know their stuff.”

“And you’re sure you’re safe?” Sam asked nervously.

“Pretty sure,” Danny said. “Apparently they only hunt stuff that’s hurting people, and I don’t count. Plus, now they’ve gone to the trouble of patching me up and don’t wanna put all that work to waste.”

“That’s not funny, dude,” Tucker said.

“Sorry.”

“So… are you going to come back?” Jazz asked.

Danny sighed. “I can’t, Jazz. I can’t face them.”

“So what’re you gonna do?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know. Dean said they’d keep me here until I healed up if I was alright with that, so I guess I’ve got a place to stay for the next week. After that… I guess I’ll figure it out.”

“Like I said. Say the word, we’ll commandeer the Ops Center and come get you,” Jazz declared.

“You’d walk out on your lives, just like that?” Danny asked.

“Of course,” Jazz said, like there was never any other option.

“We’d do it in a heartbeat,” Sam added.

“Like she said. Just say the word,” Tucker said.

“Thanks, guys,” Danny said, touched by their loyalty. “I’ll keep in touch, okay? But I’m keeping the Boo-merang. I’m sick of that thing hitting me in the head.”

“That’s fair. But you better call us,” Tucker said.

“Or I’m gonna come out there and kick your scrawny half-ghost ass, Danny Fenton!” Sam said, mock-threatening.

Danny laughed. “Yeah. I’ll call. Take care.”

“Take care of yourself, little brother. I love you,” Jazz said.

“Love you too.”

Danny hung up the phone and slowly floated back down to the ground. He missed them already, but he wasn’t going home. Not any time soon.

Danny walked back inside to find the three hunters looking carefully nonchalant.

“How much of that did you hear?” he asked, handing the relic of a phone back to Dean.

“What makes you think we heard any of it, Spooky?” Dean asked.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “A, because you’re all terrible liars and I can tell from your body language. And B, because my best friend’s a techno-geek and I know when someone’s listening in on a phone conversation.”

Sam smirked, and Dean reached over to smack him on the shoulder. “Shut up. We’re professional liars.”

“So, you don’t have anywhere to stay, huh, kid,” Bobby said.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable. “Yeah. Dean said you’d be alright with me staying here until I healed up, but if not…”

Bobby held up a hand. “That’s not where I was going. I was gonna say, would you like to stay here?”

Danny stared. “Like, until I got better?”

“Like as long as you’d like,” Bobby said. “I’ve got the space. Could use some company around here when these two idjits go off on a hunt.”

“Really?” Danny said, not wanting to believe it.

“Really,” Bobby said.

A small smile broke over Danny’s face. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! My first fic on AO3, done! Thank you for reading. As always, let me know your thoughts in comments!
> 
> I would like to say that I have never experienced abuse nor PTSD. If I have portrayed anything wrong or insensitively, PLEASE let me know so I can improve it.
> 
> Shoutout to my beta readers, dreamweaver11 and MartyrFan. (MartyrFan, you're not even in these fandoms and you still took the time to read this. Thank you!)
> 
> Goodness! I've now watched all of Danny Phantom on Hulu. I guess I need to watch Supernatural again now. :P
> 
> This will be part of a series! I'm working on more of the "comfort" part of the hurt/comfort, which my lovely beta dreamweaver11 has demanded that as retribution for my fic "hurting her on a fundamental level." Love you too.

**Author's Note:**

> So, what do you think? In character? Out of character? Interesting? Cliche? Please let me know in the comments! (Comments feed the authors, don'tcha know?) 
> 
> Comments, kudos, constructive criticism, pterodactyl shrieking, capslock vent... All welcome.


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